Silk and Stars
by Rockium
Summary: The Infection has been purged, and Hallownest slowly starts to rebuild itself. In other news, a spider gets spirited away by weird clock magic to another dimension, more at 11.
1. Start

All was silent in the darkness of the night. No laughter of children playing, no friendly chatter, not even the distinct pitter-patter of footsteps on pavement...nothing except for the rustling of grass underfoot.

A shadow loomed over the herd of slumbering sheep, the animals abruptly awakening when they sensed something coming. A panicked chorus of bleats echoed throughout the area, the woolly animals running from a giant red octopus, hungry and eager to pounce. The sheep tried to flee, but to no avail; the multi-limbed mollusk simply stretched out a tentacle and scooped up the animals, plucking them one by one off the ground like grapes.

A shepherd groggily peeked his head out the door to find out what all the ruckus was about, only to be met by a pile of sheep bones being unceremoniously thrown at his feet. He screamed and found himself rooted to the spot in the presence of the giant cephalopod, glaring at him dangerously with its glowing green eyes.

With its hunger sated, the giant mollusk vacated the scene, leaving only a pile of remains and one terrified shepherd in its wake.

xxxxxxx

A small, star-shaped spacecraft flew aimlessly through the black vastness of space, with the round, pink puffball inside fast asleep. Suddenly, an alarm blared from the cockpit, startling its sole occupant awake. "Demon beast detected on… Planet Popstar. Commencing hyper-speed acceleration," a mechanical voice announced, every screen in the ship flashing "WARP" in big red letters. Without leaving time for the puffball to react, metal blast shields enclosed him safely within, before the starship hurtled off into the unknown at the speed of light.

After what felt like an eternity later of zooming through space, the ship's blast shields finally slid open, revealing to the puffball quite a sight to behold: swirling galaxies, colorful, flashy nebulas and countless stars that dotted the void beyond the windows of the small spacecraft. The pink puffball pressed himself against the glass pane and cooed in awe, admiring the vast beauty of space.

So entranced was he that he never noticed his ship spiralling out of control until it was too late.

xxxxxxxx

Somehow, deep within the caverns, plant life not only grew, but flourished. Moss festered in every square inch of the verdant labyrinth, thriving without sunlight and in the presence of strange, acidic green pools, which bubbled and fumed noxious gases every now and then. Old stone structures, eroded with time, could barely be seen under the thick overgrowth, now only a faint relic of whatever civilisation that had chosen to live in such suffocating green depths. Numerous corpses littered the ground, most already buried under the plants, and the beings that still lived had long since been one with the greenery.

Silence. Then, a rustle of moss as something silvery and sharp pierces the bedrock. Almost instantly, a blur of red and white whizzed towards the blade, pulling the weapon out of the rocks before they could crash into the wall. The creature - a strange sort, sporting white pronged horns and a red cloak - fell a short distance forward and hit the ground running, somersaulting over mossy ruins and weaving through the labyrinth as if it knew the place from top to bottom. Occasionally, they throw their blade and fly through the air after it, as if the weapon were a grappling hook, connected to its bearer by a simple piece of glowing thread.

Ninx normally wouldn't have rushed through the Greenpath so quickly - time was of no issue in a dead kingdom - but with the disappearance of the infection that had plagued Hallownest for so long, reducing most of its inhabitants to mindless husks, the red-cloaked bug found that he now had some...matters to attend to.

If paying long-due respects and kicking a near-dead kingdom back into gear could be counted as matters.

He descended further down the verdant caverns, darting past thorny vines and more cadavers, and then found another area similar yet different to the Greenpath entirely: where seething acid lakes would be, thick vines sporting long orange thorns were, while large clumps of flowers bloomed, their luminescence brightening the otherwise-dark gardens. The red-cloaked bug immediately slowed his pace to a trot, plucking one of the smaller lilac buds from their place and turning it over in his hand, and soon cast the bloom aside.

Ninx inspected many blooms in-between leaping over twisting vines and narrowly dodging the trap-jaws of several meat-hungry flora, and then saw the creeping trail of pure white flowers along the ground once he'd ventured rather far into the gardens. He plucked one of them off their thin vine and inspected it like the other flowers - it bore fragile white petals, delicate enough to tear with one careless touch yet emanating beautiful ethereal light, its radiance strangely familiar to him - and noticing the trail of white blooms leading deeper into the gardens, Ninx followed the path of creeping vines.

He almost didn't notice the absence of the black barrier that once stood in the way of his attempts to explore further, and paused upon that realization. Turning behind him, Ninx stared at the spot where the pillar of void had been, now overrun with vines of delicate flowers - he suspected that the Shade Gate had disappeared back into the Void as well - and continued onwards, following the vine trail.

The vines crept up the walls and led him to a metal greenhouse-like structure, where the grounds were strewn with mantis corpses - from those who'd defected to the Infection, he supposed - and he almost let himself pass by a large rock, overgrown with moss, with a giant worn club embedded into the ground behind it. A grave of some sort, and his suspicions were confirmed when he neared the stone tablet for a closer look.

_CLOTH _was engraved on it, in jagged yet discernible writing, and Ninx was reminded once more of the duty he'd yet to fulfill. He then continued on, but not before leaving his own delicate bloom next to the wilted one laid on the grave.

To his surprise, the vines led him to a large egg-like cocoon that sprouted numerous white roots, which he recognised as the holding place of the former queen of Hallownest - he never thought that the shadow blockade would give way to an alternative path to her, in all the times he visited her before the Ghost...he dared not dwell on it further, lest those feelings of emptiness slowed him down.

He entered the root-spiked egg, passing Dryya's fallen carapace as he did, and found in the main chamber the large white tree, her light diminished since her prime, yet still a sight to behold. Pale, delicate flowers lined the chamber, their light almost as bright as that of the White Lady.

A warm smile graced the Root's features. "Ah! Welcome back, my child…I've not seen you for some time," she greeted, and her tone grew somber, sensing the deep sadness under the spider's stoic facade. "...Is there something you wish to tell me?"

Ninx hesitated a moment, and spoke, his voice shaky. "...the Infection has been purged at its source, and the Ghost of Hallownest has perished with it, returned to the Void where they came from." Again, he saw the split soulmask on the floor of the temple, still air in place of the black eyes that once gazed at everything in wonder, and his grief swelled in his chest-

-_not now, _he told himself, blinking away the newly-formed tears. _You can cry later when you're alone. _It was all his fault for getting attached, even when his sister warned him of the inevitable, and he hated it.

He saw the sad smile in the Lady's sapphire eyes, and they held their silence for several long moments, before the Root spoke again. "How is your sister these days? I haven't seen her since I felt the final seal break…"

"...She says she will manage," Ninx said quickly, and turned his attention to the pale blossoms growing within the room, hoping to not add the death of his mother to the sorrow on his mind. "Where did you find these flowers, Root? They weren't here the last time I saw you…"

A hint of sorrow showed itself in her eyes. "The Ghost brought them here the last time they came, as a parting gift I suppose," she said, noticing the spider's solemn expression. "Would you like to pick a few, for them and your mother? I think they'd much appreciate it."

Ninx gave a sad smile, obscured by his mask from view, and nodded. "I think so too...thank you, pale Root." He reached out and gingerly plucked two large, bright blossoms from the vine and held them close under his cloak with an extra pair of hands, fearing that tossing them into his silk-woven knapsack would damage them.

"Though I can't stay much longer, I have matters to attend to," he said, and turned to leave. "Again, thank you for the flowers."

"Consider them my parting gift, Gendered Child." And Ninx was gone, disappeared in a red blur.

xxxxxxxx

"Monster? That's ridiculous! There's no monster in this castle!" The grey-lavender snail guffawed in front of a group of discontented villagers. "Yes there is!" A shepherd argued back, still quivering from his encounter. "It's big and scary and it eats everything in sight-"

He was rudely interrupted with a sound smack from the flat end of the snail's spear. "That's King Dedede! There's no monster, now go back to your homes so His Majesty can finish his supper in peace," the grey-lavender snail ordered-

"Hey wait a minute, Escargoon! Not so fast! How do we know you're not lying again?" A girl sporting a ponytail and a green-pink patterned shirt ran up to the snail, a boy with long unruly hair and their parents trailing behind her. "Yeah, like you usually do!" The long-haired boy chimed in.

The snail, or Escargoon as he was so called, huffed in response. "You have no right to speak to me that way. Your parents should slap you silly," he commented, neither confirming nor denying the girl's suspicions, and she turned to her parents in desperation. "Papa, something funny's going on…"

Her father, a curly-haired noble, agreed, holding a thumb to his chin as he thought. "You might be right, Tiff. A monster is the kind of thing Dedede would love…" "The king must be behind this!" Her mother accused, though in hushed whispers due to being in such close proximity to the king himself.

In mock anger, the snail turned his spear on the royal family and waved it threateningly at them. "You're a court official! How dare you accuse His Royal Highness…" He turned his slimy sneer to the king, who was having supper some distance away. "Want me to check 'em in for a two week stay in the dungeon, sweet Kingy?"

With a loud chuckle, the penguin king swiveled around and joined the conversation. "Heh heh heh...A monster, huh? Would the monster happen to look anything like that?" He asked, directing everyone's attention to a tiny pink octopus in a tank, seemingly innocuous and innocent.

"That's it!" The shepherd gasped.

"That's the monster!" Another cappy chimed in.

"Except it was a hundred times bigger!"

The king laughed off the worried comments, and approached the barren fish tank. "Well you can see this ain't no monster, it's my new pet octopus. The only thing he likes to eat is sardines!" He pulled out a small fish from his robe and dropped it into the tank, and the tiny cephalopod inside gulped the whole fish down. "Heh heh ha! Little fella wouldn't hurt a fly unless one was on the end of a fish hook!"

"Of course it wouldn't…" Escargoon muttered, and turned to the cappy villagers, some showing hints of doubt on their faces. "Now get out! Go back to your trailer park so the king can have his dessert. Go on, poof! You're gone!" He ordered, louder this time, waving his spear around in a bid to chase them out. Still not swayed by the king's demonstration, Tiff ran to the octopus's tank to get a closer look and find out whether the king's claims were true.

The cephalopod itself held no answers in its menacing lime-green gaze.

xxxxxxxx

He descended into the darkness of the Deepnest, flying past spike traps and avoiding whatever hostile life there was left, and soon found his mother's shrine, deep within the Distant Village. Near the recently-polished stone plinth was another spider, her white-horned mask similar in shape to theirs.

His sister.

Cried herself to sleep, judging from the dried tear tracks on her mask.

He remembered that moment when he was bested by the Ghost, not so long ago, and allowed them entry into the place where his mother dreamt. Even though he knew the breaking of the seal was essential, he couldn't bring himself to simply let her die. Even though he knew attempting to delay the inevitable was futile, he did so anyway.

So he sat by Hornet's side and gazed at the floor for a long while, this time letting the tears flow freely; two broken siblings mourning what had long since been lost.

An infinite moment passed, and Ninx finally allowed himself to hastily wipe the tears off his mask and leave the pale bloom on the old plinth, before he hugged his still-slumbering twin and set off for his final destination for the day.

There was one more task which Ninx had yet to do.

xxxxxxx

After much more needle-slinging and climbing, he finally reached the old town above the rest of the world, and ventured onwards until he found a quiet clearing, with tablets jutting out of the ground and fenced by a low stone wall.

He found himself an empty space within the old graveyard, and at once unwrapped his silken sack and began to lay out and arrange its contents, starting with the white, cracked soulmask, long since been sealed shut.

Then followed a turquoise mothwing cloak, stained with something dark, a nail which seemed to glisten in the moonlight, a dreamcatcher talisman with a handle - for a moment he thought he saw a glowing blade shine forth from it, a small beetle shell badge peeking out silver elytra from underneath, a neatly scrolled map, a journal of some sort, a large assortment of charms, few he recognized, the others beyond his understanding, a pulsing, crystal core, and so many more odd things and trinkets that Ninx decided not to question how the Ghost carried them all around.

The last few seemed to serve no other use than as memorabilia - a gleaming, pink crystal, an ancient black egg, and a silver pocket watch.

Ninx found the last one particularly odd, despite all the other strange things he found on the Ghost. He only remembered seeing them before the kingdom had totally fallen to the Infection, with time being the least of his concerns when husks started roaming the land...what did the Ghost even keep such a thing for, if not to tell time?

He opened up the silvery lid enclosing the clock within, out of curiosity, and at once blinding light burst forth, and he felt the ground spin under his feet as his vision slowly faded to black.

xxxxxxx

"Tell me citizens of Dreamland, for what purpose have you come to consult me?" The stone totem's voice thundered throughout the forest.

"We seek your wisdom and knowledge, Kabu. For three nights a giant monster has been stealing our sheep," Sir Ebrum, the curly-haired man, said.

"And it's robbing me of my beauty sleep!" His wife, Lady Like, added.

"King Dedede says it's not his monster…" The mayor, a cappy in a brown suit and top hat, said, and another in a policeman uniform added, "But I don't believe that rascal!"

"You know the truth, Kabu!" Tuff, the long-haired boy, exclaimed, and his sister Tiff begged, "Please tell us where the monster is, Kabu, and how we can make it go away!"

All fell silent, and then Kabu spoke again. "The monster is here, and all of Dreamland is in grave danger."

"Why did he come here?" Tiff asked.

"It was called here by your own King Dedede." Unbeknownst to everyone else present, said King Dedede was eavesdropping on them from some distance away, in the safety of his jeep-tank. "Sounds like the big Kabu has got your number, Crowny," Escargoon snickered, and was promptly met with a sound thwack on the head. "That tattle-taling tiki!" The king muttered in slight annoyance.

"The monster was created by one far more powerful than King Dedede," Kabu continued, and the villagers began murmuring among themselves. "What can we do to stop them?" The mayor asked, but was not prepared for the totem's next response.

"There is nothing you can do." The cappies present went into full-blown panic, some in disbelief of their imminent doom, a few nearly losing their marbles, most chattering in frantic whispers among themselves.

"Oh dear me!"

"Is Dreamland doomed?"

"Can anybody help, Kabu?" Tiff asked again, her tone more desperate than before.

Silence, and then the tree totem spoke.

"There is one hope - a Star Warrior traveling through space, whose name is Kirby, and a nimble warrior, summoned from lands not of this world, whose name is Ninx."


	2. Bugs and Aliens

The void sea deep in the depths of the Abyss was unusually active that day. Black waves rolled and crashed onto the shore of cracked masks, tendrils morphing out of the void, threatening the few remaining vessels that dared to near it. The Elder warned them to stay away for the time being, until the void sea fell silent again, like it had two days ago.

When the old light had fallen.

Something had aggravated the Shade Lord, somehow. The Elder could feel it under their shell, the void inside sensing something gone wrong, but they couldn't grasp what.

Within the endless void sea, deep under the surface, a pair of white eyes shot open.

_**Brother is missing.**_

They couldn't sense him anywhere in Hallownest, but...wait.

They sensed him, in another location - dimension - transported by means unknown.

They saw a creature, not of their knowledge, endanger his life.

The void sea flared to life, waves crashing onto the shore more violently than before.

_**I must find him…**_

xxxxxxx

The first thing Ninx noticed was that his surroundings were brighter than usual. After having his eyes burned partially by that light which shone with the power of the Pale King himself, he squinted to see where he was, being pretty certain of the fact that he definitely wasn't in Dirtmouth's graveyard anymore.

There were way too many hues of orange and yellow in this new room for the spider to be in any way comfortable, with every inch of the area reminding him of the sickly orange of the Infection - was this place infected, somehow? The unfamiliar warmness everywhere did nothing to ease his fear. Eventually, after seeing no sign of the usual gooey blobs and slime that came with it through his still-blurry vision, Ninx calmed down somewhat, though he still had a distaste for the too-warm colors.

Once his eyes finally adjusted to the light, he noticed the platform he was standing on, strangely placed in the middle of the room, its material metallic and silvery grey, not unlike his needle - he poked it a few times with the blade's pointed end until a sound he could only compare to the clanking of elevator gears jolted him out of his wonderings, and he whipped around behind him and raised his blade - had it always been this heavy? - as the foreign metal contraption descended from the ceiling and unfolded in front of him like a map.

"What a mysterious thing," he muttered after nothing came to attack him and stepped towards the television screen, and was given a rude shock when a figure suddenly appeared on it, giving the spider a wide, greasy grin. "Welcome to Nightmare - Ohoho! What do we have here? A new customer, perhaps? Or an itty bitty baby monster, on the run-"

"_Baby?!_" The white-masked spider yelled in indignation. "I am Ninx, the protector of Hallownest! How _dare _you-" He wasn't sure why he was wasting his energy shouting at the figure instead of just sending his needle through them immediately, but he felt it was justified anyway.

"Whatever you say, Ninx, but just look at your height for a second. Trust me, anyone would think you're a lost, wandering child," the man onscreen interrupted in his snide, oily tone, and the screen cut to black, startling the little spider once more. Somehow, in his short fit of anger, he never noticed the metal platform disappearing into the ground, and when he turned his back again, only an empty orange room greeted him. But at this point, being still rather angered by the figure's comments, Ninx didn't care much about it. Nearly tripping over their cloak - _was it always this big? _\- he ran out of the large, uncomfortable orange-walled room, and let his needle fly him down the long hallways.

_Might as well find out where in all of Hallownest I am._

Unbeknownst to him, a masked figure was watching him from the hallway, listening intently to every word spoken. Their eyes flashed green for the most fleeting of moments before they disappeared down the hallway, their cape fluttering in the gentle breeze.

xxxxxxx

"Kirby...Ninx…" Tiff mumbled, and she saw in her mind two handsome knights, smiling down on her like guardian angels. _Hmm, bet they're cute…_

(She could faintly hear a horrible cackle reminiscent of the wheezes of a beached whale, but gathered it as a trick of the mind.)

"Yay, Kirby! Ninx!" Tuff cheered, bouncing up and down before he just managed to hear and not get run over by a familiar jeep-truck, driven by an equally familiar penguin king and slimy snail.

King Dedede sneered at the tree totem. "That's trash you're talking, Kabu! Ain't no such person as Kirby, or Ninx."

"That's right! You're full of Kabu-loney!" Escargoon added with a snide smirk.

The totem, however, still kept their cool. "Kabu can see the future."

"Hahaha...then why don't you predict what's gonna happen when I push this here button?" The mounted cannon was aimed right at Kabu, poised to fire, yet the stone totem was unfazed. "I predict you will not push it."

Immediately, the king burst out in a laughing fit, and playfully hammered Escargoon on the head in the midst of it. "Hey Escargoon, did you hear that lug?!" He guffawed, and readied his fist to smash the red button. "Well I predict you're dead wrong-"

The brightest of lights erupted from the sky, grabbing everyone's attention as the flaming comet fell from above and crashed onto a nearby field, and kept on careening down fields and through flocks of sheep until it finally ground to a halt on top of a steep cliff, only a few inches away from toppling off.

Truly an impressive yeet to behold.

xxxxxxx

Ninx was dumbstruck by how _bright_ the entire place was, after finding his way out of that gaudy castle. The grass was soft and lush, the skies were much bluer than he thought possible, and the gentle breeze ruffled his cloak and tickled his mask...it reminded him of Greenpath, if Greenpath was much more airy and dry and wasn't so overgrown with moss.

And out of nowhere, something fell out of the sky and rolled onto a cliff near him, about a needle's throw away. If he hadn't still been waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light (even Dirtmouth wasn't as sunny as this), he would've already flung himself to the crash site and checked things out.

He reconsidered that thought as he lifted a hand over his eyes to more clearly stare at the plume of smoke wafting from the crash site, wondering since when did his curiosity get the better of him. _I'd usually want to avoid something like that, if something pops out and attacks me…_

Minutes passed, and strangely shaped creatures started gathering around the site - he could now barely make out the star-shaped silhouette of the fallen comet - most of them tan-colored beings wearing barely any clothes, from what he could make out from his spot. Deciding to get a closer look, Ninx flung himself into the trees, easily hiding himself among the dense foliage - _had he always been this small?_ \- and he eyed a strange blue figure robed in red approaching the starship, along with an equally strange olive-shelled...well, they looked barely similar to the Snail Shamans he'd seen.

From the yellow starship, a small, round, pink thing fell out, unceremoniously landing in the crater their ship created. Again, he couldn't recognize them for the life of him, but he did manage to note how _young _they seemed. The pink thing was definitely a baby in his book. But then how were they even piloting that star in the first place? Ninx mentally added that to his ever-growing list of things that he'd probably never be able to comprehend, and focused his attention on the scene.

The blue figure raised a giant hammer - a rather strange choice for a weapon, Ninx mentally remarked - and would've smashed it right into the pink orb if another being, slightly different in shape to the tan creatures, had not interfered. A few seconds passed, his eyes not being quite able to make out their following actions in the bright light, and the blue figure visibly guffawed and held their giant mallet above their head, ready to swing it down hard-

"...Lana Ito _Hut!_" -he flung his needle so quickly that he didn't realize what he'd just done until he was hurtling right at the blue figure, having knocked their hammer out of their grip with his blade. Ninx took this brief moment to silently berate himself, before barely razing the fluff off the blue figure's hat and making a not-as-graceful-as-he'd-expected landing in front of the pink puff.

He brushed the dust off his cloak and yanked his blade out of the hammer and instantly went into high alert upon realizing the number of eyes on him, his grip tightening on the needle. "Excuse me, um…" The ponytailed girl spoke up, catching his attention. "Is your name Ninx?" For a moment he fell into shocked silence, before answering with a nearly inaudible "...yes, I'm Ninx" despite some part of him _screaming _at him to hightail it out of there, to where the crowd couldn't find him and gawk.

While the rest of the tall, tan creatures were gasping in shock (why, he didn't know), the blue figure was practically glowering with rage. "You little rascal! How dare you interrupt my clobberin' session!" He (judging from his deep voice, he was probably a he) yelled, and Ninx brandished the needle in front of himself, expecting the blue figure to attack.

And attack he did, picking up his hammer and preparing to swing. "You and your little friend are going into orbit!"

"No, don't!" The ponytailed girl cried out, a second too late.

"FORE!" The blue figure gave a mighty swing of his hammer-

-Ninx, at that moment, thanked his reflexes for being so quick, landing in a tree far from the crash site. Though he didn't have the time to grab the pink one - he winced as he watched them fly from the impact- but he quickly shrugged that regret off, climbing down the tree and taking off into the forest.

Only when he was absolutely sure no one was following him did he stop, panting heavily as he slumped onto the ground, and started thinking over his situation. He wasn't in Hallownest anymore, that was for sure - everything was way too airy and sunny here. _And why am I acting so immaturely?_

_...wait. _Ninx fished out the silver pocket watch from one of his cloak pockets, himself unsure at what point he stuffed it inside, and flipped open the cover, half-expecting to be blinded by a light beam again. Luckily for his eyesight, the cover opened without any further flair, revealing the clock within. But he noticed another oddity - even in the bright, sunny forest he was in, the clock emanated a visible, silvery glow, much like some of the charms he'd seen when he was arranging them around the Ghost's mask…

And then the realization hit him like an aspid's venom. His hands immediately went to his mask, its unusual looseness confirming his bizarre predicament. _How in Wyrm's name-_

Nothing, he thought, _nothing _should've had that kind of power. Definitely not a higher being, and _absolutely not _a near-useless clock charm. Was it the work of a long-dead Shaman? _Probably not, _he mentally argued, _I've never seen snail magic reversing aging..._His mind raced, and he found his eyelids growing heavy, having worn his now-younger body to exhaustion without knowing it. _No. Not now, not now..._He picked up the silver pocket watch, which he'd dropped in his stupor, and paced deeper into the woods.

But his legs gave way eventually, and Ninx crumpled to the ground, unable to get up again as he felt the tendrils of sleep pulling him under.

xxxxxxxx

Many of the cappies were still recovering from having their dreams outright shattered. Kirby was a round pink baby who couldn't even defend himself, and Ninx, despite having shown some skills with that weird sword of his, was still a _child,_ for King's sake. Poor things probably got bashed into oblivion once Dedede swung his hammer.

"Well that seemed unnecessary," Sir Ebrum commented. "Why did you have to clobber those two?" Lady Like asked, now slightly worried over them.

"The king just saved you all from a public menace!" Escargoon said in response, and Dedede lowered his hammer. "Yeah, they must have been the monsters that've been eatin' up all the sheep!" The penguin king concluded, despite the whispers of worry from the villagers. "I hope they're alright…"

"I'll go see," Tiff said, taking off down the hill, and Tuff, Fololo and Falala followed her, ignoring the king's muttering of "good riddance" as they ran. Or flew, in the case of the blue and pink pom-pom faeries.

Somehow, by quite a few strokes of luck, the kids found a passageway down the chasm, and didn't immediately slip and fall to their own deaths, despite neither having prior experience in safely venturing down a chasm nor experience in rock climbing. "Kirby! Ninx! Just hang on! We're coming down to help you!" Tiff shouted, and immediately afterwards lost her footing and fell straight down the chasm, hearing the screams of Tuff and the pom-pom faeries above her.

Out of fear, she shut her eyes tight and braced herself for impact, trying to not think of how long a drop it was-

-suddenly, she felt something grabbing the back of her shirt and stopping her momentum, and opened her eyes to see a sharp stalagmite mere inches from her chest. She would've met a nasty end indeed, had it not been for…

The pink, floating puffball dropped her away from the spike, and Tiff took a second to collect her thoughts again. "Kirby just saved my life…"

"A monster wouldn't have done that, Tiff," Tuff remarked, somehow having made it down the canyon in record time without nearly falling to his death as well.

"You're right, Tuff," Fololo agreed as he flew down to the kids' level.

"Maybe Kirby is a Star Warrior!" Falala brought up, noticing the looks of disbelief she received from everyone but Kirby. "Impossible, Falala. Warriors are big and strong, not pink and puffy," The ponytailed girl argued, before glancing again at Kirby, who was walking away from them, giggling. "Hey Kirby, where ya goin'?" Her brother queried.

The pink puff broke into a run, prompting the sibling duo and the twin pom-pom faeries to chase after him, before he wound up somewhere else.

"Kirby, wait for us will ya?" Tuff panted.

"He doesn't understand!" Fololo cried out.

"Don't let him get away, Fololo!" Falala said, giving chase to the pink puff.

Tiff ran after them, her mind muttering all sorts of things about Dreamland probably being doomed if its so-called "heroes" were a pink baby and a red-garbed lost child. "Some warrior…" Speaking of which, where was Ninx anyway? _Hopefully he's unharmed, somehow,_ she thought, though that would require a damned miracle.

They ran all the way to the top of a hill overlooking Cappy Town, both kids (and both pom-pom faeries) stopping for a moment to catch their breath as Kirby took the time to admire the view. Admittedly, Cappy Town didn't offer much to look at, besides a lovely view of the town square, but to the young pink puff (who had no clue what he was looking at anyway), it was all a sight to behold.

"This is Cappy Town," Falala said, noticing Kirby staring at everything in awe. "And the people are called Cappies," Tuff added, joining him on the edge of the summit. Shocked by their presence, the pink puff attempted to make a break for it, only to wind up bumping into the ponytailed girl.

"My parents work for the king, and we live in the castle. In case you were wondering, my name's Tiff," She said, personally doubting the need to introduce herself to him if he couldn't even understand-

"Name Tiff." She gasped in surprise, instantly taking back everything she'd assumed, and Kirby smiled at her. "Name Tiff!"

The long-haired boy decided to join the fun. "And I'm her brother, Tuff!"

"Tuff!" Kirby repeated in his cute baby voice.

"And we're their friends, Fololo…" "...and Falala!" The pom-pom faeries greeted, and Kirby repeated their names as well, still in his cute baby voice.

"I guess Kirby must be a baby warrior!" Tuff joked, and they all erupted into laughter at the ridiculousness of it all. How could a baby be a valiant warrior, anyway? For a brief moment, the reality of impending doom was far, far away, in the darkest depths of space where it could never find them.

Of course, King Dedede just had to ex-machina into the picture, jeep-tank at the ready. "Hey! Outta my way! I'll get that monster!" Everyone ran out of the way except Kirby, who hadn't found out the unpleasantness of getting run over by a car at top speed yet. And unpleasant it was, the impact sending him bouncing down the hill, each bounce sending aches coursing through him. Without being able to catch a breather, the jeep-tank sent the pink puff flying down the road and all he could do next was to run, and hopefully not get hit by whatever Dedede was shooting at him.

A second, painful shot to the behind sent him flying straight into the watermelon field just off the road. "Knock it off!" Tuff shouted, running after the jeep-tank with his sister. "It's not a monster!" Tiff added.

"He ran into that watermelon patch," Dedede stated, and Escargoon immediately drove the orange vehicle straight into the fruit field, crushing dozens upon dozens of watermelons in their search for Kirby.

And then two of them just so happened to be thrown into their faces. "We're not gonna let you hurt our friend Kirby!" The ponytailed girl yelled, somehow not having been run over by the jeep-tank despite standing right in front of it. Of course, the penguin king fumed in response. "Don't tell me what to do! I'm the king-"

"Wait. I have an idea," Escargoon said, knocking the watermelon shell off his head, and the two schemed for a moment, the snail's whispers going unheard by the children. "That's a good one, Escargoon." King Dedede pulled the watermelon off his head, eyeing the kids maliciously as he did so. "There's more than one way to skin a Kirby!" With that, the two drove off laughing, leaving the kids alone for the time being. "Hey, you kids all right?" Another voice asked, and they turned and saw the town's chief officer, the mayor, and a farmer some distance away from the tire tracks. "Yeah," Tiff assured the adults and added, "but where's Kirby?"

It took surprisingly little time to find the puffball, unharmed (how, she decided to ask later), casually swallowing a whole watermelon in one bite without a care in the world.

As Tiff fussed over him and the taller cappies made arrangements for that night's celebratory dinner, Kirby smiled in contentment and decided he loved the sweet taste of watermelon.

So of course, he sucked up another one.


	3. Real Cephalopod Hours

_Ninx watched as the ethereal blade of the handled talisman shimmered and faded away, while the vessel slumped onto the ground, unconscious. _

_He approached the plinth where the Beast's dreaming figure lay in her last moments of life - not like her time in this mortal coil hadn't ended long ago, he thought. Yet he still mourned her loss, despite how fleeting the time spent with her was._

_In the face of it all, Herrah was still his mother. He still thanked her for bringing him and Hornet into this world, for loving them in the months they needed it most._

_Ninx lifted the pale, horned mask from his head, laying bare his beastly nature in the silence of his mother's den. Its base was wet with something cool, and only then did he notice the fresh tears forming in his eyes, falling freely like the constant downpour in the City._

_He felt a comforting hand on his back, and he knew that Hornet was here, not a second too late. Her mask hung limply in one hand, and they held each other closer, mourning the one who bargained with the Wyrm for their lives._

_Unexpectedly, the near-melted incense candles were robbed of their light, shrouding the room in darkness, and Ninx was jolted out of his thoughts. He whipped around to face the entrance of the Den, blade in hand, only to be met with nothing out of the ordinary._

_He heard Hornet scream and instantly turned back to the body on the stone plinth, and saw six eyes in the dark, burning with sinister orange-_

-Ninx woke up with a start, feeling the wetness of his mask's interior and the dull ache in his gut, quickly fading away. His hands immediately went to his abdomen, finding only warm air where the blade was lodged into, and the little spider stopped unconsciously holding his breath.

He breathed, and wondered why his fingers were so _cold._

How long had it been since the last time he'd slept so soundly? Weeks, he guessed, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember. For so long he'd slept with one eye open, ready to strike or flee at a moment's notice. He berated himself, imagining dozens of scenarios that could've resulted while he was asleep, while fiddling with a blade of grass-

-_you're not in Hallownest, _his mind supplied when he flinched upon his sudden realization, and at once he lifted his head off the forest floor.

And then leaped about three feet into the air when he saw a face - albeit a simple one - on the tree in front of him. He backed away from the woody being as it turned its gaze to him and spoke, voice wistful and ancient.

"Don't be scared, little one...I'm not here to hurt you." As much as he still feared the old, talking tree, Ninx calmed down somewhat, and loosened his grip on the needle. "I haven't seen anyone of your like around here before...may I ask who you are?"

If the tree entity was a Root like the white queen, then Ninx guessed he wouldn't have been so surprised. Except he wasn't - or at least, the little spider couldn't sense any similarity between the ancient tree and the White Lady, other than that they were talking plantlife. He held his silence for a moment, debating whether to extend his trust to the tree, before answering. "My name is Ninx, protector of the ruins of a fallen kingdom far from here..." Then it struck him, the realization that Hornet had to deal with both his disappearance and the rebuilding of Hallownest once she woke up slapping him hard on the face, and the red-cloaked spider resolved to get himself back home as soon as possible.

(He wasn't sure why he could hear faint, awful guffaws at the back of his mind, but pushed them aside for the moment.)

But first, to get his footing. "...What do I call you by, elder?"

"Whispy Woods. Though you can just call me Whispy, no need for formalities," the elder tree replied, and added, "You seemed in quite the rush to walk yourself to exhaustion...may I ask why?"

Ninx mulled over the day's events, and eventually decided that maybe telling a random talking tree about being warped over to another dimension, de-aged and nearly crushed with a mallet in front of a bewildered crowd wasn't the best idea. He'd seem a bit cuckoo, and that definitely wasn't what he wanted, despite telling the legitimate (if ridiculous) truth.

Besides, he'd just met Whispy anyway - there was no need to burden them with all his worries and doubts at this point.

"...I'd prefer not to tell you that now," The little spider finally said, and was rather grateful that the old tree respected his silence in turn. "That's fine, we all have our secrets-" And then a loud growl interrupted the elder tree's sentence as Ninx looked down at his abdomen.

If Ninx actually had the body structure of any ordinary spider, then maybe the stomach growling (and the source of the author's problems) wouldn't have happened. However, that was not the case, so as the entire scene froze for an infinitesimal moment, the author took the time to find out how anthropomorphic spider anatomy worked.

Eventually, after some minutes of looking up spider anatomy on Wikipedia and combing SpaceBattles forums for extra details, the author deduced a somewhat reasonable-sounding explanation for how the hell Ninx's stomach could growl. "Considering that the bugs in Hallownest are about as tall as people in this instance," she started, "they would most likely have internal anatomy similar to a human's, or any other large creature, since some processes like usage of hydrostatic pressure to extend the limbs or the open circulatory system could fail if said specimens were human-sized." The author paused for a moment to collect her thoughts, and continued: "Thus, I hypothesize that the digestive system of an anthropomorphic insectoid would be anatomically similar to a human's, and would react similarly in the event of an empty stomach - which is how borborygmus could occur in a creature such as Ninx."

"And that should conclude my theory; thank you for coming to my TED talk." With that, the scientifically speculative commercial break ended and time resumed as usual, neither Ninx nor anyone else aware of the content of the prior two paragraphs.

The spider let out a nervous chuckle as he blushed under his mask. He last ate around a day ago, and would've put off a meal for longer if he didn't have to now tend to higher energy requirements from de-aging back to...well, around adolescence, he guessed. But what could he even _eat_ here? For starters, he noticed a sheer lack of dirtcarvers and tiktiks and bugs, in general, in this new place. With potential prey not exactly out in the open and swarming the place, he knew he'd run into a problem.

"Here buddy, take this." Ninx pushed aside his train of thought upon noticing the red, ripe fruit in front of him, and the furry white-and-tan creature who offered it to him. Despite being enticed by its sweet smell, the little spider eyed the red thing warily, mostly clueless as to what it was. After all, he'd never seen fruit like this grow even in the depths of Greenpath, with the only edible plant life being the mosses that grew in abundance and some small, pale berries which weren't worth more than a snack.

Eventually though, he gave in to his hunger and took the red fruit from the hamster, turning his back to them before lifting the white mask slightly, and allowing himself to bite into the fruit.

It was as sweet and tart as it smelled, but wasn't so sugary to the point of being sickening. Relishing the new flavor, Ninx devoured the rest of the apple in a few bites, leaving only a picked-clean seed core behind. Slipping his mask back over his mouth, he turned back to the furry creature and stood, bowing to him. "Thank you, um…"

"Rick, and no problem. Always happy to help," The hamster, or Rick as he was so called, said. "By the way, I can't help but ask - do you know anything about what's happened to the sheep?" At the little spider's confused stare, Rick pointed a finger in the direction of fields far away, patches of bone white scattered among the green. "There used to be tons of them here, but they've all been disappearing lately...their remains were...quite disturbing to see, I must say…" He informed, noticing the gaze in Ninx's eyes shift from confusion to wide-eyed horror. Still too shocked to say a word, despite knowing next to nothing of what a sheep was, the little spider flung his blade into the distance a flew along, until he could quite clearly see the many piles of skeletons, fully exposed to the nighttime winds.

As surprising as it was to find that these "sheep" had bony structures on the inside to keep them upright instead of a hard outer carapace, Ninx had to admit that he _really_ didn't want to think about what had happened to them. Creeping closer to observe the bones, he saw several large, jagged scrapes on each of the skeletons, carving canyons into the bony white-

_-Teeth marks, _the bug realized as his eyes widened in horror, attempting to shove the grotesque mental image out of his mind. _Something big definitely ripped their flesh apart, but what?_

He heard footsteps from some distance away, and immediately bolted into a tree, hiding himself among the foliage. Though his rustles had resulted in a masked, blue-caped figure knowing of his presence - luckily, they did nothing but stare at his hiding spot - wait, did their eyes just flash green for a second? - before turning away and approaching a dilapidated hut, not far from his tree.

Once the masked figure was out of sight, Ninx flew into another tree closer to the site, and strained his hidden ears to eavesdrop on the happenings within the hut.

xxxxxxx

Boy, was Tiff learning things about Kirby. _Things, _I tell you!

Of course, said things weren't much - the pink puff was a baby with insane durability and even crazier suction power, and that...was kinda it.

But him being the monster that's been laying waste to the local livestock? If she hadn't seen him right in front of those sheep bones and wasn't granted a live demonstration of his power of _succ _mere minutes beforehand, she would've chortled at the thought. Unfortunately, that exact thing had happened, and now she was seriously considering her life choices while hiding in a shack with the potential predator.

As much as she now feared Kirby, though, she couldn't see any malicious intent behind the puffball's innocent blue eyes. And then she had to consider him saving her life earlier...was he really the true monster? The kind, helpful part of her brain told her to stay with him and find out, and was the main reason why she hadn't hightailed it outta there yet.

She didn't know why Tuff hadn't run off yet, but she guessed he felt obligated to stay with his sister. Ride together and die together...she really hoped that the latter wouldn't happen today. They were far too young!

...Were they?

"You are the one who ate all those sheep, aren't ya?" Tuff asked accusingly, and was definitely expecting a more proper answer than Kirby's confused stare. "If you tell us the truth Kirby, maybe we can help ya," Tiff said, frantically hoping that her doubts weren't true...unfortunately, the pink puff wasn't doing much to ease her worries. Was he playing dumb, or he legitimately had no clue what they were talking about? "But if you don't, you're history!" Her brother threatened, growing more impatient by the second.

"Hey, let's check out this shack."

The duo immediately fell silent. _Who was there?_

"Wtnuhcnsuhnuhbchfbncfimfhbgc."

_(A/N: I give up.)_

Without a second thought, Tiff threw a dusty sack over the pink puffball and hid him behind her back, right in the nick of time - the door fell away and scattered dust to the wind, revealing two knights in the faint moonlight.

"It's Tiff!" The cyan-armored warrior exclaimed. "Ayun' Tuff!" His green-magenta armored friend chimed in, his near-gibberish somehow comprehensible to everyone present, probably because they all had a lesson in incomprehensible shit at some point in their lives.

"...Hi, Sword. Hi, Blade," Tuff rapidly quivered out, nearly failing in his vain attempt to remain as calm as possible. "What are you two doing here?" Tiff asked quickly, trying to keep Kirby from wriggling behind her back. _This is so not good…_

"Utddgeugiucheiuechkj," the green-clad knight, Blade, answered. "We're looking for a bloke named Kirby." Sword added, in understandable English.

At some point, her hands started sweating. "Hey, that's funny. So are we…"

"But he's sure not in here!" Tuff added, y'know, like a _liar._

"_I am not so sure." _

And then Meta Knight of all people appeared in the doorway, and in that one moment everyone watching at home started wondering why he sounded like freakin' Antonio Banderas. Some dudes hated the Spanish accent, but hey, that's a part of life.

Before anyone could even utter "Brawl MK is broken, pls nerf", the masked knight lunged towards Tiff with his golden sword, and she dashed right out of the way, leaving the sack to be impaled by it. A quick upwards swipe, and Kirby was uncovered, miraculously unharmed.

One infinitesimal moment passed.

The blue-caped knight finally lowered his sword, his eyes flashing brightest orange-green for a split second. "...It is true." With a flourish of his cape, he promptly turned and left the shack, followed closely by the siblings.

"Please Meta Knight…" Tiff pleaded. "Don't tell the king!" Tuff said, finishing her sentence. With a simple turn, the knight acknowledged their words. "The king is not the problem. For now, now we have to find the real monster."

And then an explosion resounded in the distance at the most opportune moment possible. "Woah, what was that?" One look at the column of smoke billowing from Castle Dedede answered the boy's question. To add on to that, without warning, Kirby started running right towards the castle, and once again the siblings had to run after the pink puff.

"Kirby! Wait up!"

As their cries echoed into the distance and the knights made their way towards the far-off building, a certain little spider emerged from his hiding spot on the roof, perching on the side facing the castle for a better look, once he was sure the knights were a fair distance away.

For a moment, the masked knight glanced back, and he immediately crawled back behind the hut.

"What was that, Meta Knight?"

"Just a bug I saw in the corner of my eye."

When Ninx was very sure they were absolutely gone, he dropped to the ground and ran towards the castle on the hilltop, his curiosity getting the better of him.

xxxxxxxx

So far, Kirby was having one heck of a day, from crash-landing into Dreamland to getting thwacked into a ravine to nearly getting run over by a jeep to having watermelons to seeing literal animal bones in front of him, how is that in a kids show for the love of whatever God to nearly getting impaled to nearly getting clobbered by the same guy who thwacked him into the ravine...again.

If all this was happening on his first day of...well, being alive, he guessed, then he really hoped that all the chaos was limited to today and today only. Of course, the nagging feeling at the back of his mind said otherwise, but at the moment he was too busy trying not to be squashed flat by Dedede and his giant hammer to acknowledge it.

"Kirby!" He heard Tiff gasp his name in shock and in that one moment of inaction, he got bashed in the face with the giant mallet, and proceeded to comically (and painfully, he thought as his back made contact with another wall, or was it the floor?) bounce off the walls, thanking his lucky stars that his rubbery skin could absorb most of the impact once his momentum ground to a halt. Unfortunately, that left him no time to dodge a second clobber, and he once again braced himself for impact-

-a silver blade dug into the ground between him and the maddened penguin, and half a second later a red-clad figure slammed into the king, knocking the lime-eyed glow out of him and into a nearby pillar...wait, wasn't that the odd figure from earlier who saved him from nearly getting smashed the first time? Where did they go after he got knocked into a ravine? He looked up at the smooth white chitin of their head, and they turned their determined gaze on him. "Consider this my...um, apology, for not saving you earlier." The bug offered a hand to him, and he gladly took it and picked himself back up. Of course he forgave them! After all, they were in kind of a life-and-death situation back there. Completely understandable-

-"Get away!" Kirby stood frozen in shock as a pillar crashed down onto the spot where his friends were at. Well, at least he thought they were his friends, since they were one of the few people who'd been nice to them today. Even if they didn't think of him as their friend, he still didn't want them to get hurt! "Poyo!" He cried, and seconds later finally heaved a sigh of relief, seeing that they were totally unharmed, having been pushed away at the last moment by that masked knight - who was he, anyway? He still remembered those mesmerizing gold eyes that had bored into his soul, flashing with bitter determination and something bright.

"Hey, you're on our side!" Tiff gasped in realization once she recovered from her next near-death experience, though Meta Knight still seemed to be on edge. "Look out!" As if nearly being crushed by a pillar wasn't enough, the tiny, unnoticeable octopus in one corner of the room started growing to gigantic proportions, its pink skin hardening into a tough, crimson membrane and its eyes glowing sinisterly all the while. So her wack theory was right - Dedede's tiny pet octopus was indeed the flock-devouring monster that had terrorized the town all this while.

"That must be the monster that ate all the sheep!" Tuff gasped, as if to confirm her suspicions, and the masked knight nodded in response, sword at the ready. "Yes, and it has taken control of the king!"

In no time at all, everything went to hell. Reddish tentacles burst from the walls, knocking Waddle Dees off their feet and generally wrecking the throne room. A giant tendril slammed right between the red-cloaked bug and the pink puffball, separating them as Ninx tried to fight off one giant tendril while Kirby ran to the siblings' defense, if defense was getting repeatedly thwacked by tiny octopus nightmare spawn.

The little spider wasn't doing so hot either, his needle unable to pierce through the octopus's thick skin no matter how hard he thrusted, and soon found himself cornered against a wall. Before he could attack again, the dark crimson tentacle coiled around him, and squeezed. Hard.

_Crack - _Ninx felt some part of his chitin snap, and winced as the tentacle coiled tighter around him, soon constricting his breathing. No matter how hard he struggled, the tendril wouldn't give, and slowly his vision started fading to black.

For a split second, his life flashed before his eyes, and it dawned on him: he'd never see Hallownest again. He would never have a chance to bid goodbye to Quirrel, to the White Lady, to Hornet...she would be searching for him for the rest of her life, forever unknowing of the fact that he'd died far from her, alone…

He struggled in the octopus's grip one last time, frantically fighting the looming shadow of death, before the darkness came for him and swallowed him whole.

For a brief moment, he thought he saw Mother.

…

_Crash!_

**...brother.**

**brother!**

**wake up!**

**please…**

**don't go! **

**don't end…**

**BROTHER-**

He was jolted awake by the burning chill on his shoulders.

..._Where am I? Have I..._

The black figure loomed over him, thin tendrils writhing behind their back.

_...Is this the darkness that has come to take me?..._

White eyes stared into his soul, dripping with something black, and he noticed a pair of familiar horns.

A familiar face...he thought he had lost forever.

"_Ghost?"_


End file.
